Severe Hail Storms Affect Major Metros in Texas

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On Monday, April 11, 2016, a powerful supercell thunderstorm traveled east-southeast through north-central Texas, producing baseball to softball-sized hail. The Baron Hail Swath product shows the path of the storms, and areas where hail likely occurred. A Local Storm Reports overlay shows the accuracy of the Hail Swath over the Hail Swath product shows its accuracy in this particular event.

Numerous pictures and videos of hail damage from the storm have come out of the Sunset ,Texas area, and especially from the Wylie, Texas area.

The following day, on Tuesday evening, a severe thunderstorm travelled eastward across the northern suburbs of San Antonio, Texas, producing baseball to softball-sized hail along its path.

As the storm was traveling through northern San Antonio, a severe SCIT associated with the storm indicated a 100 percent for hail, with hail size as large as 3.5” possible with the storm.

Baron’s Dual-pol with Hail product, which isolates the most likely areas of hail within a thunderstorm, shows the extent of hail possible with the storm as it moved through the metro.

Here is a volumetric image of the storm as it moved through San Antonio, which shows highest DBZ’s tilted downstream from the main core at the surface. This is due to the intense updraft associated with the storm being tilted downstream, which is typical in severe super cell thunderstorms. With this occurring, you would have a lofted hail core. Once the hail moved away from the region of highest UVV’s, the hail would eventually become too heavy and fall out ahead of the main core of the storm, which may be why in the video (below) we see a lot of the hail reports at the very leading edge of the Hail Swath.

Hail Swath from EWX with a few images from the north side of San Antonio.